You are not using a standards compliant browser. Because of this you may notice minor glitches in the rendering of this page. Please upgrade to a compliant browser for optimal viewing:
FirefoxInternet Explorer 7Safari (Mac and PC)

The Genomic Repairman is currently a Ph.D. student who escaped from the deep south, and studies DNA damage and repair through biochemical and genetic approaches. He intends to use pine away about his scientific interests and rant about the things (and there are lots of them) that annoy him.

My posts are presented as opinion and commentary and do not represent the views of LabSpaces Productions, LLC, my employer, or my educational institution.

So this week I have been emailing a former of mentor of mine just to keep in touch with them and heard some bad news. She was turned down for tenure at the SLAC (Small Liberal Arts College) where I did my undergrad. According to other sources that I have talked to, at her three year review they totally changed her requirements up on her. She was originally hired as for a chemical education TT job but was allowed to dabble in biochemistry as well. After her first year, the powers that be informed her that she could step up her biochemistry focus but maintain a baseline in the chem ed stuff. To her credit she did, coordinating labs for the introductory chem courses as well as teaching a course in science and math for teachers. However, when she hit her three year review, the T&P evaluation panel decided not to recognize her teaching and service in the biochemistry area. So this left a glaring hole in her tenure package and she had to scramble to try to get papers published and extra work done in the chemical education interest to satisfy this group. I was in a group of former students asked to evaluate and write a letter of reference for her tenure package. She came close to satisfying the requirements for tenure, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Sadly, a good teacher was denied tenure but she did not do herself any favors. I asked if she had originally gotten the okay to dabble in both areas of interest and all I got back was why? BECAUSE WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR FUCKING JOB YOU GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING. EVERYTHING. From start up, to course load requirements, to any small thing. Get it written down. A conversation with a Dean long past does not count for shit when you are standing in front of your T&P committee. To her credit though, the department has stepped up to keep this educator in a permanent Assistant Professor job (I guess she is a pseudo-Instructor level job). They recognize her as an asset and value her contributions so for her there is life beyond tenure, but this all could have been prevent if she...you got...Get it in writing. I mean for fucksake, even R.B. Greaves got it right!

Are you sure they changed the requirements on her at the three year review? It sounds more like they were enforcing the ones under which she was hired. Being "allowed to dabble in biochemistry" has a whole different connotation to me than being given a change in job description. And maintaining "a baseline in the chem ed stuff" can be interpreted in many ways. In the end you're right, she should have gotten this all in writing...

Yeah, she was verbally told by the dean that she could pursue the biochem as long she did some decent work on the Chem Ed side of the house. Now she may have taken the biochem work too far but they definitely changed the game on her at the three year review. Prabodh, she is kind of stuck at the assistant professor level permanently, and the SLAC says that if you don't get tenure the first time you really can't get it. However, they may reward her valuable service with some longer term contracts. Her title says Asst. Prof but that is for vanity, she is now just a permanent instructor, as was her predecessor in Chem Ed who did an amazing job. But in the school's defense, she wasn't a very good innovator in Chem Ed, they still use the same lab manual that we used 10 years ago when I was a freshman albeit with some new lab modules and minor changes. The sad thing, I bootstrapped all of those as my undergraduate research project and did all of the leg work. My ideas and my work. She was a nice lady but a shite mentor. But working with her was a valuable lesson, it taught me to seek out a good mentor.

I have a rule that everything I talk about with my chair I get in email, at the least. I suspect that he gets annoyed with the emails that start, I wanted to let you know that, as in our recent discussion on xx day, that I have started blah blah blah. But that way, I think I am covering my arse at least somewhat. I know that you have to get everything big in writing, but at some point a lot of interactions happen face-to-face.